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First day of school

26 August 2008

Today was the first day of classes. I got up at 7 and attempted to go for a run, but due either to the elevation or my sumptuous lifestyle I quickly tired and finished at a walk. After a shower and a bowl of Reese’s Puffs and some coffee, I biked over to the new business college. The Franke Building is really nice. I had a Computer Info class there at 9:10 am and a French class in Liberal Arts that I was very unenthused about scheduled for 1:50 pm. The CIS class went fine, the professor was easy to listen to, and it looks like it’ll be very interesting to me. The content is MS Office 2007 intro; I’ve used Office for years already, and hopefully I’ll be able to learn some new tricks. There are also some classes about Access, which I know very little about. First the professor showed a YouTube video, see below, about globalization and China’s position in all this. Check out the video, it’s quite informative.

This kind of got me thinking about the possibility of learning Chinese instead of French. I biked into town to look for some shoes –I didn’t buy any, just looked around, and went to Macy’s for a cinnamon roll. Then I checked the availability of switching my French for Chinese, and there were a few seats left in the CHI 101 class, so I swapped it over. Now I study Chinese instead of French.

I chose Chinese because it’s such a novel language and culture. And, with the way trade and commerce are headed, China will soon be the major player in world economics. In this class we will learn a lot about China’s culture at the same time we’re learning the language. The professor is Chinese, and she came to the US to teach only a week ago and it’s her first time in the US. She has excellent English, and I’m really looking forward to future classes. She showed us pictures of her child, who is still in China (Chinese are only allowed to have one child), and promised to make us a Chinese meal and Chinese tea during some of the Chinese holidays. Also, we’ll be learning Chinese songs and dressing traditionally for holiday celebrations. Over half of the class has been to China already and has a little knowledge of the country. Chinese uses graphic characters as opposed to alphabetical symbols like English does. Pronunciation is primarily tonal; many words are differentiated only by the tones of their syllables. English doesn’t use tones at all.

Tomorrow I have classes in Academic Development (EPS), Art Appreciation, and the CHI class again. Homework will probably start for real toward the end of this week. I still don’t have a job; I’m waiting for an interview from a marketing company here in Flag. Then I will know whether or not to apply at the computer center on campus.

Today a massive thunderstorm went through here. There was hail and it just dumped water down for nearly an hour. Right after it started I heard Kirk’s big voice in the next room, “Hey Jeremy, wanna play catch?” He was serious; Erik, Darryl, and him went out in the downpour and played catch with a baseball. They were totally soaked within minutes, but they still kept at it for a while. I didn’t help them, I had my door open and balls of hail were rolling in the door. Lightning set off fire alarms in town. After the storm passed, the sun came out again and the peaks were snowcapped for a few hours. That was awesome.